Dino Topia is an action roguelike RPG by XA Studio where you raise dinosaurs to rebuild after mysterious foes destroy your village. Construct a base and put dinos to work while you visit various locations to gain resources, find dino eggs to discover new dinosaurs and expand your team, create new structures at your base to strengthen your dinosaurs and gain new bonuses, and defeat powerful bosses to unlock new locations for even more discoveries.
The variety of dinosaurs inspires you to collect them all and there are benefits for getting duplicates. You can also edit your team and ensure their strengths are represented in the right jobs. It does eventually turn into a grind where you must constantly earn resources and duplicates to win. However, Dino Topia has a good foundation to build off in its Early Access state and it’s exciting to see where it goes.
Humans and dinosaurs live in harmony together, but that balance is disrupted when a human town is destroyed. The mysterious beasts knock you down and force you to rebuild from scratch. It’s up to you to rebuild your base and raise dinosaurs to defeat the threats that could destroy your hard work. As you build new structures and find new dinosaurs, you get more resources and capabilities to fight back.
There currently isn’t a strong narrative other than exploring locations to find new dinosaurs and resources. You must strengthen your team and fight stronger monsters to unlock locations. While the current build doesn’t need a story, it would be great to motivate you through the gameplay. When you have a goal that’s more admirable than “defeat X monster”, it’s more likely you stick around to play further.
Gameplay consists of building your base and fighting bosses in certain regions. Each region has randomly generated levels and you get certain rewards based on the rooms you enter. It’s your standard roguelike mechanics but you can bring two additional dinosaurs as extra fighters.
You can also enhance your dinosaurs’ attacks with perks which provide different effects such as splitting your attacks into multiple projectiles or adding elemental effects. Combining perks together is essential for your runs and it can turn even weak dinosaurs into powerful attackers. You can also get perks for your human character to boost other aspects like health. Thanks to the variety of dinosaurs you can work with, any one can stand out. Various team combinations are viable and you can freely experiment with no risk, refunding points if necessary. It’s fantastic to see a game that doesn’t penalize you for changing your mind.
Your base is also crucial to your success since you need structures for hatching dinosaur eggs and training. Dinosaur workers who don’t have traits for combat make great base workers, harvesting resources and helping you with tasks. As you get more dinosaurs, you can combine duplicates together or breed them to get more powerful dinosaurs. Different structures also help you harvest more resources or create advanced resources for further upgrades.
Every creature collection game struggles to manage duplicates but Dino Topia has a decent solution. Breeding helps your duplicates pass on better traits while combining makes certain types stronger. While it’s not perfect and doesn’t remove the element of luck, it’s comforting to see that you aren’t wasting your time grabbing eggs every run. All of your actions contribute to your success, even if it takes some time.
Unfortunately, the gameplay turns into a grind after some time since you must strengthen your team to fight in different areas. To take full advantage of the duplicate/breeding systems, you must harvest multiple dinosaur eggs through your runs. Sometimes you don’t get enough resources to level up your team and must continue your battles. It gets exhausting after a while especially if you don’t have a good reason to continue.
Dino Topia has a good foundation for a roguelike with enough mechanics to keep you coming back for more. The variety of dinosaurs and perk combinations gives you plenty to work with, adding lots of replay value. There’s no good way to lessen the pain of the grind or do something else, but there may be solutions in later builds. If you need a fresh roguelike where you can do something different, Dino Topia is worth a try.
Victor reviewed Dino Topia on PC in Early Access with a provided review copy.
